Brad Messer is off the air

Brad Messer, whose show on KTSA-AM ran two hours each weekday and who had spent 16 years with the station, was gone. Still alive, I hasten to add, but no longer on the air.

“I’ve retired,” he told me, adding that this day was different. “Very relaxing.”

As you might suspect, with the radio business being the bottom-line world it is, Brad’s retirement after 47 years on the air was not voluntary.

Officially, Brad is saying he “retired.” Station operations manager Greg Martin praised Brad but wouldn’t comment on his exit, which came on suspiciously short notice — 24 hours. They sent Brad’s producer packing, too, Martin calling it “more of a budget cut and consolidation of the staff.”

They’ve shuffled the local lineup and are putting a syndicated talk-show host on at night. When I asked Martin if that was cheaper than having a local talk-show host, he replied, “Without a doubt, that’s the case.”

So the wallets of the investors who bought the radio station last year from CBS are lighter as the week begins. Their gain is your loss, and a reminder of why the Federal Communications Commission ought to tightly regulate the airwaves, which in theory and under the law belong to the public.

If I seem angry, it’s because Brad Messer deserved better. A charter member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame along with Walter Cronkite, he always had an interesting show with great guests. He’d get national figures on a daily basis, touching upon the topics of the day. And more often than most people in his business, he’d get journalists in Baghdad to talk about the war.

For more on his life in radio, log onto www.bradmesser.com and click on “My so-called career.”

“What I was most proud of was the local stuff,” Brad said after waking up from a nap this afternoon. “Baghdad was good and the New York people were good, but I was working for the so-called average people in San Antonio. That’s where I was coming from.”

With Brad gone, you average folks won’t be hearing much of that anymore. But perhaps more importantly, the voice of a gentleman who also was a gentle, unpretentious man will be gone from our airwaves for good.

Radio is full of self-serving “personalities” who hold forth on issues of all kinds they know nothing about. Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are good examples. They know little about our armed forces but act like they could run the Pentagon.

O’Reilly is so rude to his guests that one expert I know, a retired and highly respected Marine Corps general, won’t go on his show.

Then there’s Michael Savage. He once claimed on MSNBC that embedded reporters were “losing” the war. That was during the invasion.

Baghdad fell a couple of weeks later.

Brad Messer never talked out of school, and was and is a class act. He asked good questions, treated his guests and callers with respect, and brought balance to his show even though you usually knew his was a liberal perspective.

But this is about civility, not politics.

You wouldn’t blame him if he slammed the radio station’s management for the shoddy way they treated him. They have that coming, after all.

But Brad was looking ahead when we talked today. At 67, retirement really is at hand. There may be a move out of state, maybe even to another country.

No matter what else, Brad Messer and his wife, Carole, will do well. You’ll do the same if you listen to more Willie Nelson and less talk-radio, and don’t let your babies grow up to be radio hosts.